The Psychotic Doctor

Have you seen Gmail's newest offering? The Gmail Custom Time option. The deal is, if you forget to send an email...like a birthday wish to your beloved grandmother...you can now send the wish and have the time/date stamp look as if it were sent on time (or anytime you choose back to April 1, 2004). Gmail will help you not look like an uncaring baffoon (UC) or lack luster looser (LLL). April Fool's Day is the perfect day to announce this option to the emailing world (although this is not a hoax). From now on, any time you receive an email using the Gmail system, you will not know for certain when the email was sent. The Gmail gurus recognize this to be a problem because by their own words: "Our researchers have concluded that allowing each person more than ten pre-dated emails per year would cause people to lose faith in the accuracy of time, thus rendering the feature useless." NOW THERE IS ROCKET SCIENCE!!!

What is next? The ability to retract inflamatory emails you should not have sent and assistance to provide "proof" that you did not send the email? So it "never really happened!" Get a grip Gmail. We have enough lies floating in this country. Do not support the problem!

What is the problem with Hilary Clinton? Does she know the difference between the truth and a lie? When the police interview children regarding evidence the child may give, one of the first items of discussion is to determine if the child knows right from wrong; truth from lie; and an admonition about telling the truth. Do the police need to interview Mrs. Clinton? Did she not know or realize that she would be caught when she incorrectly told people she landed under sniper fire in 1996 visit to Bosnia? What does all this say about the mental functioning of this presidential candidate? Mrs. Clinton said it was "just a misstatement." It scares me...and I am a guy who will jog in the middle of the night on a railroad track with an approaching train.

Another April Fool's Day has come and gone and Gmail will add the their Custom Time to the long list of spoofs done on that day....some of which were/are rather spectacular. The Wikipedia Page about April Fool's Day describes the disputed origins of this day. And the Museum of Hoaxes has what it calls The Top 100 April Fool's Day Hoaxes of All Time.

"Don't Let The Truth Stand In The Way Of A Good Story" was Grandpa Wuehler's motto. But he never had to stretch the truth too much. His life lived that way. A few examples:

Grandpa Wuehler was a real man...not like us today, who wince and cry at the first stumbling block. What is your MAN QUOTIENT brother?

I decided to figure out Grandpa Wuehler's (GW) Man Quotient. Went looking for manliness scales==Man Quotient scales. A Google search offered many sites. Several were, I thought, rather good. A few included the typical things you think about when you think 'male' such as
'Do not ask directions when lost,'
'Forget the toilet has a seat,'
'Only see color as the primary 16 HTML colors.'
After all this review, I decided to build Psychotic Doctor's own Man Quotient Scale using Grandpa Wuehler's life actions as the standard.

You can test yourself with GW's Man Quotient Quiz. How do you measure up?

And you thought you had problems. Check this article Telegraph.co.uk online newspaper website. They claim to be Britain's No.1 quality newspaper website. It is an article about an Indonesian fisherman who grew "roots" on his hands and feet. I KID YOU NOT! If you like weird stuff, you have to take a look. Thankfully, Dr Anthony Gaspari of the University of Maryland Medical Center went to visit the man and hopefully work on a cure.

Sadly, a follow up article talks about the war between the Dr. Gaspari and the government of Indonesia over this man's virus strain/cure. Apparently his affliction is caused by the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV), a fairly common infection that usually causes small warts to develop on sufferers. Do you have any warts? Take care now!!! Bye, Bye.

I thought some psychologists I know were practicing a legalized form of witchcraft, but this article in Telegraph.co.uk takes the cake. This Indian man (Hindu) married a dog. HEY...would I lie to you??? Go look! The marriage took place on the advice of the man's astrologer...now there is some witchcraft!

Do you have any pet peeves? As you can surmise...I have several. Today I am thinking about a particularly pernicious one. One that drives me nuts!!! Do you do online banking? And when you download your Point of Service (POS) credit or debit card transactions, what appears on the merchant line? The name of the merchant and other identifying numbers/letters, or just some obtuse string of characters which give no clue as to who is the merchant? Why is it that the merchant cannot put their name as part of the transaction line? Many do, but many do not. So since I am a derelict and occasionally forget to write down a transaction (and I know I am not alone there), I am left wondering: WHO IN THE WORLD IS IT? Home Depot is guilty. And I know what you are thinking: Look at the amount to figure out the merchant name. Right, but when I forget to write down the transaction.....then what. I know...my fault!

What is it with these merchants? I figure they fail for one or both reasons:
1. They are just plain stupid...or
2. They do not care about the customer like they say they do. The Home Depot: "You can do it; We can help" motto falls on deaf ears for me...as well as numerous other merchants who seem to dumb or too uncaring to make my day!

Psychotic Doctor is inviting you to enter your favorite Man Quotient Quiz. We will take all comers, except posts that are vulgar, pornographic, seditious, or racial slurs. Just post your entry with the URL of where to find your entry. For those of you who intend to write your own quiz and have no way to post it on the internet (man, are you web challenged!!!) you can send your entry to the Doctor and we will post it for you. At a future date we will post the best entries. Send snail mail entry to:
Psychotic Doctor
P.O. Box 1751
Marysville, CA 95901
Have Fun!

Our entry, of course, is here: GRANDPA WUEHLER'S MAN QUOTIENT

Do not lie to me! I know tax day is your favorite day of the year, right after the birthday of Osama Bin Laden (March 10, 1957), the day Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany (January 30, 1933), and 9/11. But things are not all bad. The former Internal Revenue Service (dreaded IRS) now requests to be called the United States Treasury because they are more "gentle" and "responsive" to the needs of us constituents. Call it as you wish, the US Treasury has to be the national institution which causes the greatest amount of ambivalence for you and I. We love the services provided by government (most of them--depending upon your political views), but we struggle with positive affect when we pay. Buck up cowboy...pay your dues so you can brag that you are a great American.

What will you do with your meager tax refund? How much will you receive? Not much by comparison. To me, it would be better to leave that money and pay down the national debt (assuming they would do so), rather than send everyone a few dollars. It is nothing more than a political ploy. You will receive what, $600 maybe a $1000 more or less. Sure you can use it, but for what? More "toys?" And the poor people who need the money will not receive much because they have not paid much. So all the politicians are doing is trying to convince you that they are really working in your favor--and you know the truth of that!!!

Do you watch Judge Judy, Jerry Springer (caution-site extremely slow loading), Judge Joe, or any of the other reality TV shows abounding the airwaves these days with these stupid, intellectually challenged people? Not to say that they are all losers, but in general I wonder where they get these social giants? I mean, from what knot hole do these poor souls fall with their "maligned rights?" And what about the programs where people are put through the ringer, so to speak, such as Fear Factor or Survivor (could not find a site that took less than 5 minutes to load). Has life become so easy for us that we must obtain our adrenalin rush as voyeurs peeping in on such potential "danger" on TV (although you can only know that the insurance companies have tight control over the actual risk levels).

By the way, what is your Voyeur Quotient?

We all know Murphy's general law: "If anything can go wrong, it will go wrong." But have you ever wondered who is this Murphy guy anyway? I checked Google and found this Murphy Site with the following information several stories of the origin. The best story is that he was a Captain in the US Air Force stationed at Edward's AFB in 1949. Here is that account. But others say say it is has a 1930's beginning in the US Navy. (Leave it to the fly jocks and the sailor boys to dicker.) There is also a story about a man actually named Murphy who had rather bad luck; his law beginning as he waited for the birth of his first child, sometime in the 1960s (no specific citation found). Still other say the original law was Sod's Law, and there are recollections of Sod being talked about for generations in British history. You can choose. I like the air force story, but I also like this bit of politically incorrect trivia:

By the way, the Mr. Murphy mentioned above, had this unfortunate demise: One dark evening (in the U.S.), Mr. Murphy's car ran out of gas. As he hitchhiked to a gas station, while facing traffic and wearing white, he was struck from behind by a British tourist who was driving on the wrong side of the road.

Any campers, hikers, boy scouts, girl scouts, hunters, fishers, loggers, nature freaks, etc out there? For your edification, here are a few rules Murphy found about being in the great outdoors:

1. The sun sets 47% faster than normal when setting up camp. It sets another 28% faster if rain is eminent.
2. Of a 25% chance of rain, 100% will fall in your campsite.
3. When hiking, no matter what the terrain you take half as many downhill steps as uphill.
4. 95% of a backpack's contents could have been left at home.
5. The 5% left at home will be needed.
6. A backpack's weight is not affected by the amount of food eaten out of it.
7. Ropes holding bear bags stretch.
8. All food assumes a common taste and color when freeze-dried.
9. The one new tent on the trip that leaks will be yours.
10. Tent stakes come only in the quantity 'N-1' where N is the number of stakes necessary to stake down a tent.
11.Feet expand when removed from hiking boots. The same law applies to tents and tent bags, clothing and backpacks, and sleeping bags and stuff sacks.
12. Number of mosquitoes at any given location is inversely proportional to the volume of remaining repellent.
13. The probability of finding a latrine is one over the number of poison ivy plants per acre.

The country still has a three way race for president. No matter who will receive your vote, you gotta love a comment made by a Pennsylvania retired steel worker, Felice Di Pietrantonio, reported in an article by USA Today regarding the pending Pennsylvania primary tomorrow (April 22). Our man said he's for Clinton because "it's time for a woman. They couldn't screw it up any worse than these men."

Sorry boys....I do not want to hurt your feelings, but Mr. Di Pietrantonio is correct! A WOMAN COULD NOT POSSIBLY SCREW IT UP ANY WORSE THAN US MEN!!!

The Five "L's" of Happiness: Live, Love, Learn, Laugh, L?????.

"Nothing Gets Better With Age." Murphy's Law

Went to a friend's birthday party today. Al is 80 years old. It was held in a park; maybe 40 people attended. I noticed something. There was not one iPod, MP3 player, hand held video game. There were a few mobile phones, but no one was cruising the internet on their mobile checking up on the ball game scores. There came a time, after the food, when people got to tell stories about Al and his life. I got up and in the process of telling a story, I happened to mention that I blog. The folks just stared at me with a blank look which said: "Blog? Is that some sort of sewer clog?"

You tell me: What is your vote? Stuff or Stress?